How to: Root the Galaxy Nexus 4G LTE, Flash a Custom Recovery and Make a Backup [Verizon]

Time to root your Galaxy Nexus now that @Koush has released official Clockworkmod Recovery for the LTE version. We have gone ahead and posted the manual instructions for you, because well, if you have a Nexus you should probably know most of these standard adb and fastboot commands. It’s not hard by any means, especially knowing that you all have the SDK set up after unlocking your bootloader. Should take all of 5 minutes, maybe less.

Ready?

Rooting and flashing a custom recovery:

1. Download ClockworkMod Recovery for the G-Nex. [Download]
2. Place that file in your SDK/Tools folder (same place as your adb.exe).
3. Download the superuser file aka the root file. [Download]
4. Place that file in your SDK/Tools folder.
5. Open a command prompt from within your Tools folder and type the following:

adb push su.zip /sdcard/

6. Then reboot into the bootloader:

adb reboot bootloader

7. When the boot menu loads, flash the new recovery image:

fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.5.0.4-toro.img

8. When that finishes, use the volume keys to highlight “Recovery mode,” press power to select it.
9. From recovery, scroll to “Install zip from sdcard.”
10. Then “choose zip from sdcard.”
11. Choose the “su.zip” file and install it.
12. When that finishes, back out of recovery and reboot the system.
13. Enjoy being rooted with a temporary recovery. (Permanent instructions below)

Afterwards, you will want to install ROM Manager from the market and have it re-flash recovery for you.

Make your first backup:

1. Now that you are rooted and have a custom recovery, it’s time to make your first clean backup.
2. In ROM Manager, flash Clockwork recovery again (it’s the first option up top).
3. Then tap the option to reboot into recovery just below that.
4. Once in recovery, scroll down to “backup and restore.”
5. Choose “backup” and let your phone create a backup.
6. When finished, back out of recovery and reboot the system.

CollapseShowComments

Urgent help needed–after choosing “recovery mode” in Bootloader, my phone simply restarts and shows an andoird whose belly is open with a big red “!”. I couldn’t do anything but restarting the phone. Any idea how do I get out of this limbo?

At the danger of sounding like a total moron, here I go. I am running a completely stock 4.0.2 Nexus and I am wondering if I have to unlock the phone to root it? Reason being is that I want to root my phone however, I really do not want to wipe it with an unlock to do so.

Furthermore, this article says it is using clockwork recovery, in which case I am led to believe that it belongs in a SDk/Tools folder. If so, I do not have this folder in my nexus. It is something that comes up after root? Unlock?

Sorry for sounding like a moron. I rooted my Droid X no problem, yet here I am stumped. Maybe because I am on hour 36 of a 48 hour shift at work?

Paedz718

Yes, you need to unlock to root. The sdk/tools folder is not on your phone, it would be on the computer you are typing the adb commands on. If you read the unlocking the boot loader write up, it explains how to setup adb properly, it’s all explained there.

Ahitskayla

i need help i tried to do the permanent clockwork recovery and ended up at a !android guy.. i need help

Ahitskayla

neveermind.
-.-

Clouds

When I reboot my Gnex, i don’t get that small lock icon under Google, what does that actually means? my device is unlocked? I don’t need to do the bootloader thing?
thx Guys

Ok. Never did the permanent clockwork. Ready now. Downloaded Root Explorer (full version). Mounted as R/W. Scroll down to System. Don’t see reboot-from-recovery.p Is this because I have a non-stock rom [ROM][CDMA] CM9 Kang on the phone already?

Peesa

after step 12, where i back out of recovery, i press reboot system but the screen just turns off. and when i put it on, its on the same screen. and it says its installing updates, but its been saying that for a while. is that normal?

Peesa

where do you get the recovery image recovery-clockwork-5.5.0.4-toro.img from?

Peesa

nevermind, my mistake, lol

vilivus

what is the cons and pros of permanent clockwork recovery?

Kuboo99

The pro is that you don’t need to reflash the recovery every time you want to use it. I don’t know for sure, but maybe having permanent clockwork disables OTA updates. I don’t know for sure though, just know that on my Transformer a custom recovery takes away OTA support. So that could be a con.

drew

I have tried going through this a few times but I cannot get to the recovery mode. when i try and enter recovery mode it pulls up the google screen with the unlocked symbol and then stays there indefinitely. any suggestions?

For the permanent clockwork recovery, is there an app that is free? If so, which app and how would I do it?

Anonymous

I have been extremely nervous about rooting my Galaxy Nexus, but finally decided to bite the bullet and do it. I just finished rooting, only having a couple “hiccups” and now I’m ready to have some fun! Thanks for all the help!

Can anyone help me out here. I have the bootloader unlocked and everything works fine until after step 8. When I use the volume keys to go to recovery mode and select it, my phone goes to the google logo and stays there. CWM recovery does not boot and I dont get to install zip from sdcard. Anyone know why I can’t get through this step? I dont get any errors pushing the su file nor when I flash CWM. Any help is appreciated!

Minterbomber

Nvm, I figured it out. My CWM file was bad and I got it from the link above. If anyone else runs into this problem get the file from clockwork on the xda developers forum. The CWM file should be 5,140 kb. The one from the link above is only 74.1 kb.

im not gonna lie, im just lazy right now, but i hate using adb. i mean, i can use it if i have to, i think the laziness just took over. is there a significant battery change if you hack the gnex and put a ROM on it?

I followed these rooting instructions and lost my 3g/4g data. i could makes a call and use wifi but network data was gone. i flashed back to the stock image and locked my phone. any idea what happened? trying to identify it before i unlock again.

Tuna

Hey anyone else having an issue where you can only boot into recovery if you have CWM reflash recovery every time before you reboot into it?

Blakecaldwell22

Kellex Kellex Kellex!
Are you going to show us how to install cyanogen mod when it comes out for the gnex so we don’t screw anything up? please do!!

Dez

whats the diff between having it permanently or not ????????????

Blakecaldwell22

is there any real advantage to permenantly installing clockwork recovery when you can just use the temporary?

Ed

what’s the difference between the temporary recovery and the permanent one?

Anonymous

when you switch roms you usually have to do a factory reset, and since there is no SD card to put CWM on, it is deleted also unless you put it in the folder above^^

Steve Blais

ok.. rooted ogd here (rip) now gnex owner. Wondering what are some of the highlights of a rooted gnex that are worth the root, is overclocking worth it anymore.. just need a cliff notes version.. as I have never owned a nexus device prior to gnex. oh yeah .. battery life 9hours consistently before getting to 15% (with moderate use, email gtalk, browse pulse news app etc..fsquare)

mons

Can get better battery life with undervolted kernels. It’s best to unlock and root now, while the phone is fresh, since unlocking the bootloader will wipe the phone. I read somewhere that the GN idles at 700 MHz, which is probably higher than necessary – just using Set CPU to drop that should make a big difference in battery life. CM9 will probably be awesome when it’s done.

The way I see it, there’s no reason to not root.

RW-1

I finally got the nerve after unlocking and rooted it, went without a hiccup.

but since I havent seen it here I wanted to share what is on other boards.

If you root and have issues with your power button waking up the screen, it is light flow and a setting at bottom of general settings, turn it off and you’ll be ok, no need to restore from backup …

Italia1918

does this method install busy box? the droidforums instructions you have to install seperate?

Phone doesn’t recognize ADB – have used every conceivable method – downloaded Samsung drivers. Downloaded PDANet. Uninstalled Samsung and tried Naked Samsung. I got the phone unlocked. But I CANNOT get the PC 64 to recognize ADB when I am in fastboot. HELPPPPPPP. I’ve been working on this for TWO DAYS, and it is RUINING my Christmas holiday.

that along with PDA. I’m on windows 7. Before I used that I was hanging after typing fastboot oem unlock. After following that link unlocking, rooting, and installing cwm went smoothly.

QtDL

Super quick, stupid noob question – I am already unlocked, rooted, and running stock ICS. If I were to hit ‘factory reset’ under the settings menu, will it relock and unroot or just go back to 4.0.1 w/o my apps (still unlocked and rooted) until I sync again? Thanks. 🙂

Johnsonscouting

I have the bootloader unlocked, was no problem. The problem that I am having is getting the phone rooted. I have pushed the two files(su, and rec img) to the phone and when I go into recovery it shows an adroid on its back with an exclamation point and I have to do a battery pull to get out. the phone works no prob just cant get past this. any ideas?

Matthew Rosidivito

Try re-flashing recovery in step 7.

Anonymous

I have done it 3 times with the same results. Not sure. Thanks for the reply though for sure. I think i will try my other laptop, could be something to try

Matthew Rosidivito

Maybe you got a bad download? Try downloading the ClockworkMod Recovery file again and flashing that instead.

Anonymous

Figured it out. My phone had installed superuser from the market because it was on my old X2. As soon as I unistalled superuser it went. Weird, if that wasnt ot dont know, but I tried like 15 times with no success until I cut and reinstalled superuser. Thanks though.

Anonymous

I decided to give it another try and this time it got to the screen that comes up when you turn it on and it showed “Google” and the unlocked lock at the bottom of the screen. In a video on Youtube a guy says to put the files in the tools folder, but in the directions above it states to use the platform tools and thats what I have been doing. It has the adb exe file in there too. Any thoughts? I have the I’m stupid feeling now. After a battery pull all appears to be well, just NO ROOT

Johnsonscouting

I have the

theblast

If I flash ClockworkMod Recovery onto my phone will I still be able to receive updates? If so, how so? I’m sure this question has been beaten to death, but I’m curious to know before I do this(I just unlocked the bootloader =D).

SKAV3NG3R

Can you unroot a permanently rooted phone? If you can, how do you do that? Is it with the regular unroot?

Milr46

Trying to root, I get to num11, choose th su.zip file and install it but its not there? Any help would br great.

Anonymous

Make sure when you type “adb push su.zip /sdcard/” that you are leaving a space in between su.zip and /sdcard/. I did not leave this space the first few times I tried it and it did not work, but when I put the space in, the file showed up on the phone. Hope this helps!

Anonymous

I didn’t know so many idiots read Droid-Life. 1) You can’t judge a devices battery life for at least 3 days. 2) If this is your first Verizon 4G phone, your battery life will definitely suck compared to whatever phone you are switching from. If you’d like your battery to last all day with heavy use, I suggest you get the RAZR. Not the DROID RAZR but the V3 RAZR flip phone.

Does anyone else NOT have “/system/reboot-from-recovery.p” CDMA Nexus. I have to keep flashing CW Recovery using ROM Manager if I want to do anything in recovery.

Anonymous

I read the comments that if you don’t have permanent root then after the phone reboots you need to flash Clockwork Recovery again. I let my battery die and after I plugged in and restarted it still shows that my recovery is ClockworkMod 5.5.0.4. I never did the steps for permanent root so I’m confused. Why doesn’t it show the stock recovery?

Al

When I type adb push su.zip /sdcard/ (with the space) I get..
error: device not found.

If I look at the folder structure on the phone I don’t even see the sdcard folder. How do I proceed?

Al

Also, I’m looking to just root the phone. I don’t want custom recovery.

Al

When I type adb devices, I get “List of devices attached” but there is nothing listed.

Al

The list was empty because USB debugging was unchecked. Unlocking the bootloader unchecked it.

Al

I was able to push this file once USB debugging was checked but I still can’t see it in the folder structure.

RW-1

Hi all,

My question has to do with staying with the stock recovery versus making CWM perm.

I’m already unlocked, and wish to root. So I know I can boot to the CWM and then push su etc.
(I’m crossing my fingers there for root 🙂 )

Any advantage of making CWM perm? Not yet going to place a ROMM on it, just wifi tethering and changing a few default APK’s (Transparent geniewidget anyone?)

Thanks.

now that said, has anyone thought of WHY you get th elock icon on screen?

We need to address that because IMHO unlocking has always been something that no one has been able to tell just by booting – IOW did VZ force this or Sam/Goog?

Now the dumbest VZ rep could for unrelated issues be rebooting your unit and see that you have unlocked it … you see where I’m going with this?

Anonymous

This might be a stupid question, but why doesn’t just installing CWR from ROM Manager make it “permanent” clockwork recovery? Is there any major benefit/drawback to having the permanent CWR installed?

Coming from OG Droid and been a long time, but I don’t recall ever having to worry about ‘permanent’ recovery installs.

Yes. You cant receive an OTA update without the stock recovery installed. you can keep the clockwork recovery for now and flash the stock back when an OTA update comes out

QtDL

I accidentally made CWR permanent (oops – stupid noob). How do I flash back to stock? I want to stay unlocked and rooted. DL said instructions would be posted at a later date. Can I just hit ‘factory reset’ under the settings menu or will that F*&% up my phone?

nick

I have a few problems after unlocking/rooting the phone. I thought it was a SIM card issue, but it’s not. After I unlocked and rooted the Gnex, my 3G/4G service just disappeared, I had none. So I re-locked and unrooted it, and I got data service back. Any thoughts? (I did go to Verizon a couple hours ago to see if it was a SIM card issue)

LikeRepl

RW-1

Coinsidence, nothing more.

A lot of people have been having data drops, and signal loss issues… I’m sorry that you had the experience.

But the act of unlocking your bootloader and rooting the phone MAKES NO CHANGES (not screaming at you, just emphasis needed) to the baseband radio files, or anything else ont he phone related to it getting on the network.

I realize where thsi line of thought leads, and I do wish to quash it now. If VZ didn’t want 4G rooteed access, then you would have a lot more people than just nexus owners losing total data after rooting and unlocking.

nick

I understand what your saying, I guess I’ll just wait for the 4.0.3 update and see what I can do after.

i am in the same boat. i rooted with these instructions and i dont have data service. i can make calls but no data. 3g or 4g. something changed.
could using a specific driver somehow affected this? seems odd.

My Galaxy Nexus has this problem where it will freeze for a second then make a loud popping noise then instantly power off, then after about 3 seconds later reboot. It has happened twice for me. I can’t tell if there is something wrong with the hardware because i get what i believe is good battery life and signal strength and everything seems to work fine. What are everyone’s thoughts as to what i should do?

EDIT: Also it happened when i was in the settings (right after turning off airplane mode) and when i was loading flash on a webpage.

Anonymous

I get a popping sound at shutdown as well. It just happened after rooting. Hopefully that goes away soon… 🙁

Tyler

I haven’t rooted and this isn’t at shutdown its random shutdown(like if the battery where removed) and it makes me nervous. Love the phone just need to figure out if the hardware is bad or not.

Eric

Mine randomly rebooted a few times the other day. It was on silent mode so don’t know if it made the popping sound or not. Turned out it was a recent app I installed- Juice Defender. Uninstalled the app and problem went away. Maybe its a rouge app? Many apps are not yet compatible with ICS so people are running into some issues.

Anonymous

I’m trying to install the android sdk but step 3 says open the android-sdk-windows folder and launch the sdk manager. saying it will ask for which packages to install, but that doesn’t happen. I see a black DOS screen open and quickly close. I don’t get an option to do anything. Where should I go from here?

Anytime you want to flash something custom to your phone you need a custom recovery, ex clockwork recovery. With the temp clockwork recovery you are able to root your phone then go right back to the stock recovery so you can still receive OTA updates. The benefit of permanent recovery just makes it easier so you dont have to constantly flash a custom temp recovery whenever you want to flash something custom to your phone

xxdesmus

I’m only seeing “recovery-from-boot.p” in the system folder. What am I doing wrong here?

QUESTION: Galaxy Nexus on Verizon. I unlocked the bootloader and pushed su/root with adb.

How long does “temporary root” last? I backed out of recovery and rebooted… saw I had superuser installed—> installed rom manager—> flashed current recovery 5.5.0.4 —> made a backup.
[2011-12-17-gn-first-b.u.]

My Nexus rebooted and I still have root with su permission. Rom manager sees the back up and root explorer still has R/W privileges. So am I permanent or temp? I’m still plugged into my computer with usb cable… When do I lose root?

Anonymous

How do you record the screen in 4.0?

Tom Craig

Push volume down and power at the same time and hold it for a sec. Have fun!

Anthony Armando

root + lte + extended battery + setcpu = win

Jason

That was it! Thanks for the help! If anyone else misses that you have to reload the clockwork recovery file to or it will go back to the stock android recovery. Just a heads up for everyone.

Jason

tried in recovery couldn’t find the device so I just rebooted

Jason

should I reboot to home and do the push or can I do the push in recovery? Thanks for the help, been awhile since I’ve done all this on the OG

Pete

This is my first time rooting. What is the drawback to temporary root as compared to permanent root?

Anonymous

Read a few comments below for an answer to this question.

Anonymous

Horray. I’m now officially unlocked and rooted.

Jason

need some help real quick! When I get to the part in recovery to choose zip from SD card the su.zip file is not there?? I did the push but it’s not in there, I looked in all the folders to, think I could just do another push from command prompt with the phone in recovery mode?

Anonymous

Make sure you put a space in between “su.zip” and “/sdcard/”. Your cammand should be “adb push su.zip /sdcard/”. See the space after zip? And yes, you can just do another push. When you do the push it will tell you that it was successful in x amount of seconds.

Tony Romano

Haven’t been that nervous in almost two years. Feels good to have Rom Manager and Titanium on my home screen. My kids have been neglected all morning.

RW-1

I’m right with you there, something about it being new, and $299 will do that to you hehehe ….

Riky

For those of you (by being overly cautious) trying to figure out why it lists no devices after you reboot the bootloader and when you type ‘adb devices’. Type ‘fastboot devices’. This will check to find your device and rest your worries

Matthew Marshall

First off thank you for the unlocking and rooting guides, very helpful. Now I have already unlocked the bootloader of the phone and rooted it, but I haven’t done the permanent Clockwork Recovery. What is the reason to do that? Is it suggested that I do?

And once you are rooted what are some of the first things that I should be doing with my phone?

Anonymous

Please see my response to mjmedstarved below for an answer to your first question.

As to what you should be doing after you root… the world is your playground! You can now install a wireless tether app, titanium for removing bloatware, adfree, get google wallet on your phone, and try out some new ROMs! I highly recommend reading up on ROMs and how you need to flash them before you dive into it if you are new to the process. Enjoy!!

Italia1918

I unlocked the bootloader but if I root will I still get the updates as long as i dont put a custom rom on yet ?

So do you have to always use adb to boot back into recovery or is there a button sequence on the phone at boot?

Anonymous

You have a couple options to do it from the phone.

You can press both volume keys and power at the same time to boot into fastboot. Then use your volume up or down keys to select recovery and hit your power button. You will then be in recovery.

Also if you download ROM manager there is a reboot into recovery option on the main page.

babadush

Thank you Kellex. Once again you provide a wonderful service to the community.

Anonymous

If you want permanent Clockwork Recovery (via XDA):

I’m a little confused as to if/why I need to do this. Does this make it so that clockworkmod will not be overwritten by an over the air update? I always thought that clockwork was pretty permanent on the og droid.

Anonymous

I, too would like to know the answer to this…… Perm vs non…

Anonymous

With non-permanent every time you re-boot your phone the stock recovery
will overwrite Clockwork Mod Recovery and you will have the re-flash CWM to
have a custom recovery. Once you delete or change the name of the “/system/recovery-from-boot.p” file, then when you re-boot your phone it will not overwrite CWM recovery and you will still have it.

So, no you don’t HAVE to do this but you will lose CWM Recovery after every re-boot. I just changed the name of the file to “/system/recovery-from-boot.p.bak”. That way it will not overwrite the custom recovery and I can change it back should I ever need to.

Thanks goes to all the devs who have helped me gather this info. Hope it helps you as well.

Anonymous

Thank you so much!

Anonymous

I was wondering about this as well. One question regarding what you said. If I haven’t yet set CWM to be permanent and I reboot my phone (thus causing stock recovery to overwrite it) can I simply re-flash CWM from within ROM Manager to get it back.

Anonymous

Yep, that’s all it takes.

Anonymous

Thanks. I thought so. Another question, will rooting and getting CWM installed block me from receiving OTA updates? Just curious about that part as well. And if it doesn’t block them (or if it does but I don’t make CWM permanent and the stock recovery is running at the time) will OTAs break root? I never had those problems on my OG, but I do remember reading about people with other phones losing root when they accepted OTA updates.

Anonymous

From what I have read it does look like rooting may interfere with OTA updates. A guy a few posts below this already ran into this problem. However, Google will also release the source to these updates and you can flash them if you want to keep stock (maybe even before the OTA is pushed out). Also devs will update their ROMs with the OTA updates and you can flash those as well.

Long story short, it looks like it may interfere with OTA updates, but you can flash these updates in a couple different ways.

Pete

I let my battery run out completely and after I plugged it in and powered the phone back on it still says my current recovery is ClockworkMod 5.5.0.4 in ROM Manager. Why didn’t the stock recovery overwrite CWM?

Btpetrina

well I have unlocked and rooted my phone but have no WiFi?? can anyone help me?

Nick

I unlocked bootloader and ro oted no problem and made a backup. However the OTA for 4.0.2 just hit my phone and when it reboots to install it I only get the ” ! ” which appears to be an error. I let it sit for a while and nothing happens until I battery pull. Any ideas on what i need to do to get 4.0.2 to install properly?

Anonymous

Nick, I am not as well versed as some of these guys, but from what I read you need to go back to stock to accept the update. I’m not sure you need to re-lock the bootloader, but I am almost positive you need to go back to the original image without root.

Nick

In case anyone is not as savvy as I am and is stuck like I was, I followed steps to unroot but using 4.0.1 files instead of 4.0.2. Then once rebooted, the update to 4.0.2 OTA was available right away so I installed with no problem. Then I rerooted.

By the way, I never re-locked the bootloader.

Anonymous

Someone please help. My Galaxy Nexus now turns on and stays on for a few seconds, but when I turn the screen off then back on it won’t come back on and I have to do a battery pull to boot back up and start the entire cycle all over again.

Anonymous

If I root can I still accept software updates from Google?

Anonymous

Great walk through! I followed the bootloader and root instructions and both worked flawlessly. Thank you! I have a couple questions. I don’t consider myself a noob but I am coming from a Dinc that I used ROM Manager to do all flashing of custom recoveries and ROMs (currently getting to know my way around SDK and ADB).

1. With your process for installing permanent recovery (deleting the reboot-from-recovery.p file), is there a way to remove CWM recovery should my world collapse and for some reason I need to bring my phone to VZW? I assume there is and it is fairly simple I just wanted to triple check.

2. Will the nexus be similar to the Dinc with most available ROMs listed in ROM Manager and easily flashed with a press of a button? I don’t mind flashing through other methods, I just wondered if it would be as simple as it was.

Thanks again guys. Loving my nexus.

Anonymous

If you’re doing this on Ubuntu, get the newest superboot for galaxy nexus. It contains fastboot-linux. Then replace all the “fastboot” commands above with “sudo ./fastboot-linux”. The rest of the command is the same regarding fastboot.

My question now is, what happens when I install an update from Google? Does this have to be done again each time? If so, do I follow the same process? Or do I need to reflash the original image to remove the current root and then re-root?

No, just put those files into your C:Program Files (x86)Androidandroid-sdkplatform-tools or C:Program Files (x86)Androidandroid-sdktools folder, whichever has adb and fastboot.exe in them.

Don’t unzip or otherwise modify those files.

Anonymous

dumb question: can you brick your device if you have a nand backup? or rather, can you unbrick it with a nand backup?

Brian Walls

Odd, reception on my Nexus so far has been outstanding, yes compared to my OG, and 4G reaches, really where it shouldn’t.

Pepitocontreras2000

Im having issues as my phone tries to install update 4.0.2 it wont install. What would i have to do in order to install it? Im already rooted and unlocked thanks.

Anonymous

Dude. It’s been 24 hrs since I got my G-Nex and couldn’t be happier. Had a bit of trouble unlocking but I found a different usb driver that did the trick. All those haters raggin’ on the G-Nex hardware can kiss my @ss. The thing is beautiful, fast and ICS is a huge step up from GB. It’s enormous and that will take a bit of getting used to (I had an OG) but I am extremely happy with my purchase. +1 to Google & Samsung. VZW can suck it.

Anonymous

I’d rather not root this device, i prefer to still recieve software updates.

Anonymous

Understand something fvqu. You root so you can flash ROMs. This serves you far better than updates. ROM makers also cater to new OS builds. Occasionally you will SBF back to stock, update to a new OS build with the most recent updates and flash the new ROM which tricks out the news OS build. During your trip, you enjoy a tricked out phone.
Not to sound antagonistic, but if you are not prepared to occasionally spend a little time enhancing your phone, then it really is a complete waste of your time coming to the forum and making that statement.

Anonymous

root it. trust me. its worth doing for Titanium Backup alone. Its a Nexus so you can always get the images from Google directly when they are released.

Sk4t3rg0d

Can anyone please help, Yes Im on a mac, but I followed all instructions and was able to unlock my boot loader quite fast. But when I try to push the “su.zip” to the phone this is what I get.

No, you just have to have ADB running and listing your device before you can push the su.zip file (or any other file/ command). If you’re USB-Debugging is turned on and your device is not listing when you run: “adb devices” try running “adb kill-server” first and then “adb start-server”.

Anonymous

no but you need to run the push command from the directory where su.zip is located or put in the full path to the file

Sk4t3rg0d

I put the ‘su.zip’ file in the same directory as adb and if my adb commands are working doesn’t that mean i’m executing push from the correct directory

Sk4t3rg0d

never mind you are correct, must be something wrong with my path, i typed in the whole location and it worked. thanks.

Anonymous

not necessarily. I dont have a mac, but if you have the equivalent of environment variables (the PATH settings in the instructions) then adb will run from any directory. if you change to the directory where su.zip is located and run sdb from there it should work. If I had a Mac I could be more helpful but Im sorry that I dont. Kellex might be able to help you out if you contact him. Or you can google unlocking for a mac. Im sure there are detailed posts for that.

Mj2332166

If you want an easier way of flashing clockwork recovery do it through rom manager. Takes 1 minute.

bmacdx

adb.exe (if you are downloading the latest sdk for windows) is not in tools/ its in platform-tools/

Also remember that fastboot.exe is not in the r16 release of the Android SDK and you will need to download it separately.

Anonymous

So i’m new to this, but it’s my understanding that before doing any of this (rooting, roms, etc), the phone (well, bootloader) has to be unlocked, right? And no matter what, unlocking will wipe the phone, is this correct? And that’s why it’s recommended to unlock right away, so dont really have to start over at a later date, right?

Way too complicated for me, especially since I just wanna root. I’ll wait for some hero at XDA or elsewhere to devise a rooting method that doesn’t involve wiping the phone first or messing with ADB or the SDK.

Are you being serious? Nexus devices are the easiest devices to root. Most times its 15-20 lines you must type in adb. And no matter what, your device will be wiped as when you unlock the bootloader, it wipes your device. Pretty sure no way around that. I wouldnt recommend rooting if you think this is complicated. Not trying to be an ass, just trying to save you from messing your device up.

Nice. Hopefully Fedex delivers mine on time too and I wont be working much either. I already told my boss I wouldnt be working that much today and he said its cool as he just got it yesterday and totally understands, lol.

Jothen2002

Thank you to everyone who contributes in the awesome step by step instructions. It makes simpletons like me have a chance.

SO I went through the step by step process of setting up my SDK toolkit last night. Is there anyway confirming I did this correctly..or do I have to just give it a whirl??..One happen to one clicks lol..
Thanks again…

Steve

Why is my battery showing a little over 1 hour remaining at 80%? Took it off charge at 8am and havent really touched it much and I’m already down to 80%….

QtDL

The screen uses a ton of power. Dial down the brightness to as low as you can tolerate…it should help at least a little. Mine is probably turned down to about 15% or so and it still looks pretty bright to me. I have been off of the charger for about 4 hours now and at about 86% w/ light to med usage.

Steve

Yeah I noticed the screen really boning my battery. I also restricted background data while I’m at work since I’m on wifi, seems to be helping a lot

Anonymous

There is something really wrong with my battery for sure. I used the phone for 23 minutes – nothing crazy with my screen pretty dim…..and my battery was at 83%. Yesterday it was dead almost all day and I had it plugged in to the computer. Nothing abnormal that I can see draining it but boy is it going fast. I’m thinking maybe I have a bad battery?

Other than that I LOVE the phone -it’s just awesome.

Any thoughts?

QtDL

Hmmm….does it charge up any differently when you plug it into an outlet? I’ve never charged a phone through my computer so I wouldn’t think it would be any different but who knows. If you can’t find a logical explanation, just go to VZW and get a new battery – well have them swap out the bad one. I am at 6 hrs, 10 min. w/ 79% – not too sure if that’s good or bad.

Anonymous

Wow – I wish I could go 6hrs and only lose 20%. I’m gonna goto VZ and try to get new battery — will they fight w me?

sorry for this dumb question..after downloading superuser file do i have to unzip it? which file do i need to put in the sdk folder? thanks for any help.

Anonymous

nope just copy the zip to the /sdcard/ partition like the instructions say. if you follow the instructions exactly it will work like a charm

Jaime Ramirez

theres a easier way to do it just go to the unlocker download the folder. adb reboot bootloader when you get the android logo flying on the folder there a root option just clikc phone might freeze just unplug and take out battery and thats it

Anonymous

kellex … thanks for all this. i know youve taken some heat the past couple weeks with all the leaks and rumors. even i was getting sick of it! 🙂 but now it is all good. THANKS AGAIN for the site and especially the tips, instructions, etc.

This was most helpful.
Some Tips:If you are not seeing the device when pushing su.zip in the adb screen, make sure USB Debugging is turned on, in Settings/Developer Option, in the phone.If you’re stuck on “Waiting for Device” in the Bootloader screen, this tip helped me, from the original Unlock Bootloader tutorial, Go To your Device Manager, and you should see your device listed with Android 1.0, or Samsung Device… : Navigate through and manually add your SAMSUNG Android Phone device driver (“Let me pick”) – should be dated 11-25. This is the driver you downloaded from Samsung. Then Boom, the command your originally typed to flash the recovery will continue. Hope this helps.

b00ky

What if we want to root our phones without installing a custom recovery? Is that possible using ADB and pushing the superuser files, etc? I am new to ADB, but unlocking was very easy. Being that this is a Google developer phone, I was wondering if there was any advantage to keeping the stock recovery for the Nexus (future updates, etc which I guess you could just manually install with a custom recovery)? I read some older posts about the GSM version and they pushed some sort of temporary boot.img then pushed the su files, but when all was said and done they made it seem like the recovery was still the original stock recovery. Just wondering. I also saw a recommended link at one point for learning more about the basics of adb. If anyone has any suggestions please share them.

wild guess, but did you put fastboot.exe in your platform tools folder?

dead5hea

Yea, its in there.

Anonymous

Did you ever get this figured out? I am having this same issue.

Ben Tarpley

Question for the room… when i get to “fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.5.0.4-toro.img” it seems to time-out in adb. It just sits there stating sending ‘recovery’ . This isn’t my first rooting rodeo, but I’m still probably a FNG to most ppl’s standards. Has anyone else confronted this?

Jeston

By the way, anyone who wants to keep CWM on permanently needs to delete or rename the file
/system/recovery-from-boot.p. If this file is not renamed or deleted, then the stock recovery will be reflashed on the next boot up.

Anonymous

Everything was working great, but now I’m stuck in a loop of “Unfortunately, the process com.android.phone has stopped.” which I think has something to do with me messing around with LCD Density. Any suggestions?

Also, how do we get into recovery?

Anonymous

The only working way I’ve found is through adb. I’m reinstalling the software (using Pete’s rooted rom), so hopefully that will fix the problem.

It’s still not seeing it, i only see “list of devices attached” and nothing else

Whytecountry

I don’t understand. fastboot oem unlock doesn’t work. it says waiting for device and it does nothing. I’ve installed all the drivers, I still don’t know what “AdbWinApi.dll”. The instructions say I may have to put that into platform-tools, except it doesn’t say what it is or where it comes from. And I haven’t gotten any “AdbWinApi.dll” specific errors. But it’s installed all the drivers, so I don’t see what the problem is.

Can anyone help?

guest

I dunno about missing that .dll file, it was there for me, but I did have the stuck at “waiting for device” and what it turned out to be was i needed to manually find the Samsung driver and add it via my device control panel.

When you get to the point of waiting on device, it is because your driver needs to be updated. With your galaxy nexus connected to your computer go into printers and devices (or reverse) and scroll down. You should see a device with a yellow question mark and says Android 1.0. Update that driver to a samsung android device (i am doing this from memory here) and once that is done you should get beyond this point and able to unlock the bootloader. Lots of details in the comments in the unlock the bootloader thread. Many of us had this issue.

Anonymous

If you aren’t getting the dll file error message then don’t worry about it. My particular developer program was missing it so I had to go find a copy of the file and add it to my tools file. Then it worked for me. I too was stuck at the point of the phone not being recognized in bootloader mode (waiting for device).
You are in the same boat I was. Here is what you have to do:

1. Get your phone into bootloader mode.
2. Before entering the second command (fastbook oem unlock) go back to your device manager and the “Android 1.0” with the yellow exclamation icon will be there again.
3. From there, scroll down and follow Nadeem’s step by step instructions on how to get the driver updates to take. I PROMISE IT WORKS.

Anonymous

Sorry, Nadeems instructions are in the other thread on how to unlock the boot loader.

Anonymous

After i pushed the .zip file to the SD Card and ADB Reboot Bootloader command, I waited to go into the boot menu then the device disconnects. is this right?

I’m still waiting for mine in the mail and am trying to decide whether to even unlock the bootloader.. I suppose the possibility that I may want to tinker could creep up but really I only ever tinkered with any phone to make it function beyond what Verizon or a manufacturer were limiting.. I rooted my Droid Incredible so I could put plain stock vanilla Android on it, even CM was too modified for me 😛 I can’t get much more stock than a Nexus so I really don’t know if the desire will ever be there. I guess what I’m saying is you guys think I should still go ahead and unlock the boot loader just in case? I can always do it later at a minor inconvenience of having to back anything up on it cause all my data will be wiped. Anyone else in my boat? 🙂

Does this void your warranty
and when i type in fastboot oem unlock it just says waiting for device and does nothing

Litdreams10

Dont have the SDK installed then.

Anonymous

I noticed that at the store… but the one I bought has no lag at all… weird. The VZW guys were like… yeah but it doesn’t even have an SD card… wtf?… so I had to explain how syncing to the cloud is the future and micro sd cards will eventually go away in smart phones…

You can disagree now, but I absolutely know you will loathe and bitterly complain the day that everything has gone to the cloud. Everyone will…they.just can not look into what it really means and how it in the end only benefits the companIes supplying cloud service and the other entities connected, i.e. software and hardware vendors and their clients. Cloud only is the end of actually owning anything you buy, and it’s so damn sad and stupid no one recognizes this until after it’s already happened. But I guess that’s the case with most things.

Anonymous

My cloud consists of accessing my home NAS from anywhere…. so not sure what you’re talking about…

Marco

What will you do if you have bad signal (ie. no or very slow data speeds)?

Anonymous

If its that important it will be on the device already or in my laptop if I’m traveling.. 32gb is plenty of internal storage…

I agree with your point about the cloud service companies being the ones who will benefit from this move. I disagree with the thought that it will be the end of owning what you buy. If you purchase a CD or DVD or book, you are really only purchasing the rights to view/listen to the content. You don’t actually own the content, only the rights of viewership and a plastic disk/bound book of paper.

Laif

I rather not drain my battery constantly using data. Plus, I frequent areas where the Nexus gets very slow speeds. Cloud storage isn’t practical.

Anonymous

And 32gb isn’t enough? Please.

Erick

When I choose “choose zip from sdcard.” , I don’t see the “su.zip” file. Any help?

I’m not sure how the nexus works yet as i’m waiting for mine. (I had to order it the store near me sold out already). Odds are to receive OTA updates right now you would need to be unrooted. Once roms like CM9 start rolling out…you’re probably going to forget all about the updates and start running the source that they have for you.

don’t use custom recovery then? super easy to root without loading one. the only thing is, are updates blocked by being rooted like chris says.

Anonymous

really? dang. I hope not 😛

Doug

What wireless tether do you use?

Anonymous

wireless tether… ? the yellow wifi logo thingy

Tim242

I didn’t even get to the rooting part before I decided I’m going to return it. Too many annoyances. The main 2 being camera and battery life. My Thunderbolt gets better battery life. The Nexus went from 100%, tov35% in 3.5 hrs. That was with light usage…10 emais and some browsing. It’s going back!

Anonymous

Did you fully charge it out of the box? You know those things were sitting in the Verizon stores for a while.

Tim242

I fully charged it 3 times today, on its 4th now. That’s just browsing, email, and 2 youtube videos. That HD screen eats that battery. Oh, and I was on 3G all day, as I’m just outside of the 4G coverage for a little while longer. They were testing 4G here today. Funny thing is, I only knew that by looking at my thunderbolt. It never came on, on the Nexus.

Anonymous

Yeah I agree the battery seems to be going fast. I also seem to be getting less 3G signal than on my OG. I wonder if software can fix the signal issues.

Jesus Montoya

Software can’t fix Samsung.

Litdreams10

I’m coming up on hour 10 with over 15% battery left. Been using 4G all day and using it quite heavily. Your issue is the phone searching for 4G or switching back and forth between the two all day. Turn it to 3G only til your area gets better 4G coverage.

Tim242

It has been on 3G all day. It has not once gone to 4G. The battery is awful. It has used 20% in 15 minutes of browsing…that’s with the brightness around 18%. Screen is dim ugggj

John

What he’s saying is there’s a chance your phone is attempting to continuously connect to 4G, but is unable. So, the 4G radio is working and eating battery in the background. Turn off your 4g radio.

Tim242

If that were the case, everybody in a 3G area withb4G phones would have to disable it. I have never had to do that on my Thunderbolt.

Anthony

But…that’s what everyone does. They turn off their 4g if they have no signal….not sure what was up with your thunderbolt

Tim242

There is no reason to disable 4G, unless you’re in a 4G area and want to save battery. If you are in 3G, your phone is not constantly searching for 4G. It only picks it up upon tower handoff.

Anonymous

Why are you so stubborn?
Just turn off the 4G, you’re not using it anyway.
Second, check your running apps. There might be one unoptimized for ICS that’s killing your battery with a memory leak or something.
If nothing helps and your life stays this bad, hit up VZW. The device or battery might be defective…it happens.

Tim242

I live 10 minutes from 4G. I am not toggling it several times per day. I never had to do it on my Thunderbolt. Regardless, the phone is not as great as it has been made out to be. I’m hitting up Verizon…to return the phone and happily pay the restocking fee.

BillyT

You are the first fan of the Thunderbolt I have met! We had 3 of them and they all sucked bad – buggy data connection, bad battery life (unless you put that big ass wart battery on it and even then it would just make it through the day) and no updates. The only thing that made that phone tolerable was CM7.

Mikey

Thunderbolts are the worst phones ever made……

Anonymous

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Guest

+1

Brianmcbride99

The whole point all along Timbo was that fresh out of the box the 4G connection is “on” if you’re not in a 4g area obviously it defaults to 3G however it is STILL searching for a 4G connection, if it didn’t it would NEVER make the pass through connection to 4G when you hit a 4G coverage area. The point was force the flipping radio to 3G while at home and see if that improves your battery life -it should.

Tim242

If that were the case, you would have to turn off 3G, while inn 4G, to keep it from searching for 3G. That is not even possible. Your logic is flawed.

Exceter M

I… there are no words in your lack of comprehension.

LTE/CDMA Mode = 4G with 3G switching enabled. This means that 4G connection will activate when the signal is available. If it is not, it will switch to 3G WHILE constantly searching for 4G and eating up your battery in the process.

CDMA Mode= Pure 3G connection. No searching for a 4G signal, no eating battery wastefully. This method will continuously connect to 3G when available or drop to 1x if unavailable. This mode essentially just turns off the 4G radio on the phone. The 3G radio will NEVER be turned off in ANY mode unless Airplane Mode is turned on.

Simple enough for you?

Tim242

Let’s just see if this is simple enough for you. It is not constantly searching for 4G. It only knows it is available when the 3G tower hands off to 4G tower. That’s why it takes a few minutes for 4G to pop on, after you go from 3G, to 4G coverage. That handoff has been the subject of critism from the media and blogs. I have never disabled the 4G on my Thunderbolt, and the battery is fine. Disabling 4G is just something you OCD nerds do, that doesn’t do a thing. Learn how it works, before you try to insult my intelligence.

Miles McQueen

trololol

Mike

You really aren’t too bright are you? The phone defaults to LTE. It will ALWAYS be searching for LTE. If you’re in a fringe area, that will kill your battery life. If you weren’t so god damn stubborn, you could possibly solve your problem.

Tim242

I did solve my problem. Returned it, got the Razr. Battery is much better. 4G radio not disabled.

If you’re in an area with no 4G, the phone probably tries, then gives up. If you’re at a fringe, it may well be ping-ponging between working 3G and failing 4G. Unlikely from the same tower.. 4G actually propagates a little better than 3G, so this wouldn’t be a problem for most people, most of the time.

But for any new device, you need to give it a really good first charge. Most manufacturers recommend 10-12 hours. That’s not strictly necessary, but you want that battery as charged as it can get. THEN you need to run the battery down all the way.. let the machine die completely.

Deal here is that battery life is predicted by measuring tiny voltage level changes. But batteries vary a bit, even over time and temperature. The capacity metering adjusts to this, but it needs a history of battery activity. When the phone’s new, it has some generic guesstimate based on the average battery, not your specific cell. So condition it as I recommended, and it’ll be far more accurate.

Christopher riner

Man you might have wound up with a battery that has a bad cell. Ive been extremely pleased/surprised with the battery life on mine. Ive eaten up over half a gig today downloading my apps and surfing the web and got like 12 hours out of my first charge. I plugged it back up from 8 until about nine and im still at 65% now that its 2 a.m. eastern time. I would definitely look into it before returning that beast…. i couldnt he happier. My signal strength has been great and the lowest speed test ive ran was like 14 down. Most of them were in the 20’s. Havent hit thirty yet but i live in a low populated area and the speeds on 4g are almost always unbelievable compared to what a lot of people say they get.

On a side note, i cant believe its taken me this long to post today. I guess ive just been like animal on the drums with this phone all day.

RonBurgundy

I’ve also experienced fast battery drain as I had to charge 3 times. From reading what others have posted in various forums that I may have a bad battery…? Anyone know if I can go to Verizon and get a battery exchange?

An official Verizon store should do this for you. Or at least, they’ll mail you one and ask for the old one back via mail.

Anonymous

+1 for animal on the drums

Anonymous

My battery life has been great too. And even with low bars my data and voice is fast as hell. I thibk this phone just guages the reception differently. For those saying samsung has bad radios and youre going to return it, please just get on with it and stop posting about it here. Go back to your thunderbolt or charge. Youre probably not actually gonna return it anyway.

My Nexus has been on battery for 5 hours, 24 minutes, and I have 54% left. I work in a building that kills signal, so I have zero to two bars all day. That’s hard on the battery.

I should note that I bought the extended battery. I’m absolutely thrilled. This means that even in the worst reception I’m going to experience, I can count on 10 hours of use, and I don’t have to resort to a battery the size of a small brick.

Jamaicawind

So what exactly do i get out of rooting my nexus? Like i jailbroke my iphone and i kind of got the point of that but what do i gain from jailbreaking a nexus? it already seems like i can do a lot on it as is

Anonymous

Tethering, Titanium Backup, and a lot more.

Granted

Nobody will ever tell you this haha! And they especially won’t tell you because, duh!, you are dumb for not knowing just like we don’t, minus the shady things that are accomplished. The guy above mentioned some but it’s always hilarious how when nice friendly people ask this simple question, it never gets friendly, or most the time any answers. But you’re not cool if you don’t root, that should be reason enough! You smell my sarcasm with that last sentence?

Anonymous

Not sure what you mean. The only reason to root would be if you want to run apps that require it or want to load custom roms. It’s simple…

You are cool by simply owning a Galaxy Nexus!

Unlocked bootloader and root are just one of it’s many benefits which are not for everyone.

Most people don’t think anyone is stupid by asking a question. It is how new people learn… Yes there are always a few with their noses in the air, but it’s like that with everything.

There are a number of apps that require root access (free tethering is probably the most popular)

Another thing that it does, unlike jailbreaking an iphone, is allow you to install completely new, customized ROM’s (OS’s). Since Android is open source developers from all over the world take the code and modify it to add tweaks, add-ons, different looks, etc.

It’s one of the really cool aspects of Android (for some people – like me)

Hsuede7

How does doing a data wipe work with no sd card? Do you lose everything?

Anonymous

I don’t know about from recovery, but when you wipe when unlocking the bootloader, you lose everything, including the sdcard equivalent

pete

My first comment on my nexus! Love the ICS!

Anonymous

That is the only thing going for it ICS 🙂

Erkleehoo

Everybody is enjoying their new nexii and are not paying you no attention.

I can’t believe any of these comments. I just got one today and it is amazing, really a beautiful piece of hardware. I think most people would consider this one of the best android devices out there and for $150 on a 2 year contract, the price is right.

Anonymous

I just type facts. I do not know why these geeks gets mad lol. I guess i get on their skin lol.

Guest

all you type are lies and bullchit. none of the stuff you type is facts NONE OF IT!!! now run along and suck some more cock!!

DeViLFaCe11

*under their skin* lol
lol

Anonymous

🙂

Znibbor

You’re the kid that got a Sega Saturn for Christmas when everyone else got a Nintendo 64…

Guest

LMAO!!! GOOD ONE MAN!!! He’s a loser!!

Anonymous

I just got a ps2 when i was 20. I only played grand theft auto lol. Keep playing those kids games lol. Moto won this battle as usual kudos to them.

Guest

Dudethe only thing you play with is your fathers cock in your mouth.

Rolo72

Funny thing about the fact that u keep mentioning that….is the fact that your precious Razr will only see a meer shadow of ics with your Blurred out POS lol.

Guest

yeah that razor is a stone cold turd of a phone. now turd razor maxx is coming out. sad!!!

Anonymous

I love my gingerbread 2.3.5 on the razr. I am more of hardware type of guy. Moto has it all right now period. They give us what we want. You have been complaining to Samsung about their weak radios, gps etc and they have not done nothing about it.

Tim242

I have to agree! Mine is going back!

Granted

Every time you posted in the last month just had it’s conviction shrivel up and die, while screaming “Mommy no!”.

Anonymous

These geeks hyped this crap all year and the device lags like a turtle lol. You will enjoy the rezound and the razr better.

Guest

Mcclane said when you are done sucking your dads dick come on over he wants to have anal sex with you.

Guest

…….

Pete

man i m happy with the whole phone coz guess what i have upgraded from? its call piece of ishit.

Anonymous

lol, you would have been happier with the Razr 🙂

Guest

razr is the worse piece of chit mot made so far!! BIG FAIL!!!

Marvin de Pano

You, sir, just won the ignorant post of the month.

Guest

he’s a worthless piece of loser shitt that was raped by his father when he was young that’s why he acts the way he does.

Anonymous

That is the fact whether you want to admit it or not 🙂

Diaz32

Too bad that’s actually true.

Anonymous

I told these geeks to listen to me. I know about technology. They went with the nexus, you will see them crying lol.

Guest

Your dad is worried he drilled your azz yo hard tonight call hime when you get a chance.

Life22

Yep, the GN is POS. I am returning it tomorrow and get the razr. BTW, should this site be renamed Nexus-life.com? Geez.

Granted

Yes, yes it should indeed be named that. Inundation never has received such a sordid name as it has in the past two months.

Anonymous

The nexus = very bad and overrated lol. You will enjoy your experience with the razr and even the rezound is better than this crap aka nexus.

Guest

WRONG!!!!!

Guest

The only thing you have going for you is sucking cock and slurping up cum faggitt!

Will we still receive OTA updates from Verizon after doing this? It’s not running a custom rom, right? So we should still get them?

Geoffrey Brewer

So wait, if I root, will I need to unroot every time an OTA update comes through the pipeline? That was my experience on my Droid X and I eventually got sick of it, so I’m wondering if I’ll need to do the same here.

Mayze23

Is there any way to root without unlocking the bootloader?

Anonymous

My phone came with the bootloader already unlocked. Dont know how but it was.

John

It was probably returned or opened by employees.

Anonymous

Who knows if an employee was on it or not, but I was the first into the store this morning so it couldn’t have been returned.

I spent all day, very angrily, trying to root my Galaxy Nexus through the “traditional way”, which is fastbooting into a new boot.img that is somehow compromised and then loading the su and Superuser.apk files through adb. This didn’t work at all, i either had a “fake root” or the fastboot image just wouldn’t work.

The method above for rooting through Clockwork Recovery, Koush’s method I believe, worked perfectly and ended 2 hours of battery pulling, hard resetting frustration for me. All of the other methods posted earlier were not tested on a wide variety of devices and were somewhat irresponsibly posted. This is the way to do it.

Anonymous

Same for me. No other methods for superuser worked at all. I assumed it would be as easy as adb rooting my OG droid, but no go. Above method is the only way I got SU to work. Now I’m finally rooted.

Steve Martin

Nexus what?!?!? Nexus SUCKS. Galaxy Nexus that is.

Anonymous

this was seriously the craziest day in Android history. A lot was accomplished, thanks Droid-Life!

Anonymous

This is SOOO awesome! I didn’t think this would be ready on day 1.
Now I just need to get used to the volume rocker on the left side and the power button on the right! Coming from an OG, I have already accidentally reboot twice when in recovery when I meant to go down, lol.

Yeah that’s what I thought, just replace flash with “boot” so you can boot into Clockwork, install su.zip, and then lose the custom recovery on the next reboot. Safer and, at this point, better because there isn’t anything too special you’d want to do with Clockwork at this stage of Galaxy Nexus development (unless you desperately need to make backups or try alpha ROMs).

Anonymous

I am having issues with mac… I have the sdk set up. I have the fastboot file for mac. when I CD to the platform-tools folder and type in ./fastboot-mac oem unlock it tells me
-bash: ./fastboot-mac: Permission denied
HALP

If not, it means the permission on the fastboot file is no good. Try sudo chmod 777 ./fastboot-mac to make the fastboot file executable.

A combo of those two tips will work assuming you have a real fastboot file.

Also warning, the oem unlock command erases your device.

Anonymous

it can’t erase it… i don’t have it yet! 😛
and thanks

Anonymous

alright, so i did that thing with the chmod and that made it executable. then it says ERROR: could not get pipe properties ERROR: could not get pipe properties ERROR: could not get pipe properties and spams me with more of that… any ideas? is it just because i don’t have a device?

Anonymous

Glad to hear it, I love when one of the few unix commands I know comes in handy.

You may not want to do that so hastily. I don’t think it shows actual signal strength very well. I have terrible coverage at home, and the phone was showing that I had no signal (opposed to 1 or 2 bars on my T-Bolt) and I was recieveing texts and having conversations with no problems, even though it showed that I had no coverage. I’ve noticed that a couple times over the day. Give it some time.

HectorG

I’m not talking about bars. In weak areas where my OG gets okay 3G speeds, the Nexus gets 1x or no data. If it connects to 3G, it’s not much faster than 1x. Also, calls aren’t as clear in these areas.

I have seen different results. Obviously, my OG Droid is off the network now, but it can still show signal strength. I know the places in my house I’ve had problems with the Droid (I’m in a forest, Verizon is the only carrier that regularly makes it here, but there are weak places).

I can’t find any place where the Nexus holds a signal but the Droid didn’t. But going the other way, the Nexus is holding its own. There’s one room that was always 1x on the Droid; Nexus works there, but also 1x. In my cellar, I sometimes got Droid reception, often not… the Nexus at the moment is “not”, but not enough of a test to be certain.

I really did expect the OG Droid to be better, simply because it’s the best smartphone I’ve owned, reception wise. Motorola may not build as slick a cellphone as Apple or Samsung (though they’re getting there; the RAZR was close, but I won’t buy a phone with fixed battery), but they know their RF engineering in ways Apple may in 10 or 20 years, if they keep at it.

I see the Nexus consistently about 5dB lower on RSSI than the Droid. But the Nexus bar graph is totally misleading. In the same room, I’ve got the Nexus just at the “0th” bar, that single-pixel or whatever at the tip, and the Droid on 3 bars. Nexus is doing just dandy on 3G, no problems. Nexus reads about -100dB, Droid reads -95dB. In another room, I got a full bar on the Nexus at -93dB, Droid still at 3 bars.

So my conclusion is that the Nexus may not be quite as good on antenna/RF front end as the Droid. But the bar graph is totally wack… it has no connection to reality.

Anonymous

The bars are not what you should be going by.

Check the actual signal reading… it is very poor.

Mine at home usually sits between -120dBm and -140dBm

Tech support told me anything higher than -95 is a poor signal.

If you look under settings, about phone, status you will see it. The lower the number the better signal (-80 is great, while -120 sucks)

“I am looking now and of course I am at -120dBm

Vance2804ibr

I’m having very poor signal too. This is the first smartphone I’ve owned so I don’t know what to expect since I live in a rural area.

I agree with you Kleen Droid but I just wanted to make a correction on what the tech told you. This is my pet peeve. I’m a math person and tech should’ve told you lower than -95 is poor. -80 is actually a larger number.

Lamar

I’m returning my Nexus. I get better signal on my OG. Very noticeable in weaker signal areas luke at woek and various areas in the city.

The bad Samsung radios stories are actually true.

Anonymous

Android 4.1 is supposed to make night and day improvements

Jaime Ramirez

ur an idiot

JDiaz

Awww, did someone’s feelings get hurt?

Anonymous

Dude, chill out and as far as calling someone an idiot because they’re expressing what’s going on with their device is is wrong.

That’s what this blog is all about.helping each other and giving sound advice, not calling people names and acting immature.

Maybe he has a defective device, not all devices are perfect off an assembly line. Maybe he just needs to try using the extended battery.

Instead of bashing someone try being helpful and give good advice or suggestions. Thank you and Happy Holidays 🙂

SadNexOwner

The signal is a lot weaker than my OG was. The call quality is okay but i think the weak signal might be why my battery life is terrible. I’m getting about 8 hours before i’m down to 20%. To me that is unexcepetable. For my job i don’t want to be constantly plugging in every chance i get. This is my first LTE phone so i don’t know if the Nexus is really bad compared to other LTE phones or if all of them are this bad with battery life. It sucks because my OG is basically dead now so i want to return the Nexus but have no clue what else i should get. I don’t want the i*hone 4s but i keep hearing how battery life is amazing. I would be willing to sacrifice LTE for any decent Android phone with decent battery life. Oh yeah the camera on this thing isn’t bad but it is about OG level which is kind of disappointing for a phone that is 2 years newer. All in all it is a solid phone but way over hyped.

The Nexus is killing my Thunderbolt in battery life. I work in a building where signal is weak. I’m getting a full day out of the extended battery. I have the regular battery as a backup.

I would venture to say that the Nexus is probably the best LTE device on the market with respect to battery life, or at least pretty close.

Admin

The rezound got great battery life but its running a polished android version (2.3). Radio amd battry can both be improved upon with updates. The Rezound is 3x thicker but lasted feom 8am to midnight with 20% left. The Nexus with extended battery was at 15% at 8pm. First day and a few charges will extend it. Also HTC Sense can be doing some battery saving techniques not found in stock.

Both phones were using 3G all day with LTE turned off. The Nexus IS new and ive been showing it off all day which could explain less battery life.

Anonymous

Wow… That’s strange. I have the exact opposite experience. My Thunderbolt had great battery life compared to my new Nexus.

I am also experiencing poor signal with lost data and dropped calls.

AJ

Of corse there are going to be bugs. Did you think you were going to get a perfect version of ICS straight out of the box? This is kinda what happens for early adopters. I dont think you knew what you were getting yourself into.

I walked around the house with my OG Droid and GN, comparing reported signal strength. It was interesting. The Droid was usually about 5dB higher, around -94 to -97dB, while the Nexus was usually at -100dB. Thing is, at -95dB, the Droid shows three bars. At -100dB, the Nexus shows just that zeroth bar, the very tip of its bar graph. In all cases, the performance on the Nexus wasn’t a problem, so the bar-graph representation was definitely misleading.

In my experience, the O. G. Droid had excellent reception, better than any smartphone I’ve used. The difference in reception levels could be calibration of the RSSI detector, but it could be signal path and antenna, too… the Nexus does have to squeeze in one more antenna, and more switching for it, so a slightly lower RSSI isn’t a shock. That’s also not the whole story, since this doesn’t take into account positive or negative impacts of filtering and LNA on each device (I used to design digital radio systems, I know a little about this stuff). Fact is, even when it’s on that next-to-nothing position on the bar graph, the Nexus was web surfing, and faster (on 3G here) than my Droid did. Which I assume is mostly the effect of about 5x more CPU power… it’s hard to imagine the 3G link is actually faster when showing next to zero bars.

Anyway, I predict Samsung/Google will get their act together and at least make the bar graph reflect reality in some soon-to-be-delivered update. The current scale is completely useless… I’m not even sure where you have to go to get more than a bar or two.

Kent

I’m getting subpar signal quality too (very apparent in voice quality and data speeds). I called Verizon tech support and they told me others have been calling with the same problem. According to the tier 2 support, it’s already been logged as priority 1 status. Whatever that means.

I’m going to give Google till the end of my return period before returning it (they release updates fast, right). Data and voice are the most important features of a smartphone for me. If a smartphone can’t do that well, it’s not worth my time. Unlocked bootloaders, fast updates and no bloat are all secondary features.

Brad W.

I agree, signal is the most important feature. In terms of signal quality in weaker areas, the Nexus is worse than my Thunderbolt which is worse than my OG. That’s pretty bad. I’m considering returning it within my refund period if things don’t change.

Steve Martin

hasn’t it only been like 2 days? and people are already experiencing problems? lmao. wasn’t this the best phone? It probably is. The best phone that can’t be used as a phone. lol. Anyone ready for the next best device to be announced this week?

Joe Zifer

Do you remember when the iphone 4 came out?

I really liked you in Father of The Bride btw.

Anonymous

is it for all gnexi?

Anonymous

Consider using SIP or a VOIP app for WiFi and LTE calling. (Assuming you have unlimited data).

Tony Romano

Yeah, had the Razr for one week. Way better radio and battery, but i’m rooted now so here to stay. first non-moto phone in my life

Jack

@51af49174ee78c38f0f19b2014c9e7a0:disqus Software can, in fact, give a radio better reception. To a certain point.

On the Droid X, for instance, there were several radio upgrades that gave the phone better reception.

I already somehow rooted mine while messing around with it today. I don’t really know how that happened, but I have full su support now. I might have to go through these instructions and see if I missed something.

Twekth!! haha yay!! Im doing this right now…
My first call on my phone was from a guy at best buy informing me that they were in stock there…

hahaha

Anonymous

the 2 stores that put my name on “the list” have not even called me. must’ve been an idea individual stores were using just to appease customers with no real intention or corporate guidance.

Anonymous

I posted this on another story, but I’ll post it here as well. We all know this phone is super popular and many who are very unfamiliar with ADB are going to attempt to unlock and root their phone. It’s not hard if you know a little about what you’re doing, but we all know that won’t be the case with everyone. There will be 1000s of questions and people asking for help. I suggested that, as he did when he made a video starting from scratch to root the OG Droid, Kellex make a how-to on doing all of this – unlocking, rooting, installing custom recovery, etc. Start from the beginning (installing the correct files and drivers) and go through everything step-by-step. This way those that might have issues have something to follow along with. I know that when I decided to root my OG that video was great. The write-ups on rooting were nice, but having a video to follow along with was fantastic. It was impossible for me to mess up. I’ve already rooted the Nexus, so this wouldn’t be for me. It would be for those who are worried and/or confused.

Matthew Marshall

I second that, would be very helpful for someone who just hoped on the Android wagon with this phone such as myself.

I agree! This would be extremely helpful. Kellex, please do it… for us!?!?!

Anonymous

Something I am confused about is why I am still unable to use ScreenCast…I have confirmed that I am rooted (able to successfully use wireless tether) but the ScreenCast application will only record black (blank) videos. (within ScreenCast I am able to test a benchmark, don’t know if that helps)

Anonymous

You seem to know whats going on around here…i followed the steps and pushed the su.zip and got into the clockwork recovery, but when I search for the su.zip I cannot locate it. Any idea what is going on?

Anonymous

did you push the su.zip file properly?
adb push su.zip /sdcard/
there’s a space between zip and file

I had the same issue. I tried it with and without the space between zip and /. Finally, using Windows Explorer, I copy/pasted su.zip onto the root Internal Storage folder of the GNex. After accessing the bootloader I typed
fastboot flash recovery recovery-clockwork-5.5.0.4-toro.img and found su.zip just fine.

Jheim

I agree my galaxy nex has been unlocked and rooted for 8 months. Honestly I’m afraid to flash a rom. If I mess up and brick my phone I don’t know anyone I can call for help. A detailed video would be nice!

Matthew Marshall

What does this do exactly? I’m new to android, first experience with the Galaxy Nexus, and not sure what exactly comes out of “unlocking the bootloader” and applying roms.

Any FAQs or tutorials for a newbie?

Anonymous

Go over to Cyanogenmod’s website and read some of the stuff on the website. We’re not at the official CM9 build yet for ICS, but the test builds are out there. If you have an older Android phone put CM7 on it and play around til you’re comfortable with the steps and understand them.

QtDL

Excellent idea. I’ve wanted to learn how to do all this stuff too. I guess my old OG Droid will still have some use after all. I was going to put him in retirement, but I guess not so soon.

Anonymous

the OG droid is an excellent candidate for overclocking near 1ghz so i would highly recommend giving it a shot. once you get motoblur off there, it’s like having a phone that you would use as a daily driver and will realize the potential it has. You can root with a simple APK, then bootstrap with another APK then install ROM manager / CWM and you’re good to go to install a custom ROM of your choice or download one from the ROM manager tool. It’s the best 5 bux I ever spent on any app/tool.

Anonymous

The OG droid had no motoblur.

Anonymous

hmmm weird….in reality i know you’re right, but mine originally came with it. i was getting screwed before i knew i was getting screwed. i know the D2 did for sure.

Yea…OG Droid never had blur. Seems like someone forgot what Android looked like as 2.0.1 (I believe this was original)

Anonymous

2.0 was original, then 2.0.1, then 2.1, then 2.2

Bryan

As an owner and rooter of the OG droid I can say it never had MotoBlur, nor did you need any 5 dollar bootstrap app, just one click root and clockworkmod, done!

lostsync

It seems like a LOT of the people who got the GN were coming from the OG…some of this is timing, i’m sure, but I think a lot of it is also having seen what new kernels and roms can do to extend the life of a phone first hand. I passed on a lot of phones waiting on one that I could treat the way I treated my OG.

Bewara2009

This phone is a joke, why the hell would you want to root it with no SD slot?

Ok, I’ll bite. SD Card support doesn’t mean that you can’t move files back and forth, on Windows it is in fact easier. Swing and a miss.

Anonymous

If you play with this device today. you will see that it lags more than the rezound lol. I found that very hard to believe today but it did lag a lot.

Bewara2009

I did play with it, and it was slower than the rezound. The only think I like its the screen other than that its a fail…

Anonymous

I like ICS, the display on the razr is not hd but it is awesome compare to the bionic’s.

Guest

It sucks worse than the bionic. You have no clue what you are talking about! Lick so more cum faggo!

Guest

sorry loser this phone blows away everything out there even that turd of a phone razor with last year spec. go suck some more cock faggo!!

Guest

Razor is way slow with moto blur. Its a paper weight that all its good for. Go suck that dick gay boy!

Bill Guy

Why root the GNexus….I forgot

Michael Woods

There is no SDCard

Anonymous

If you’ve already unlocked the bootloader and gained superuser access, you can just open up Rom Manager, choose ‘Flash Clockwork Mod Recovery,’ then just select the option that says CDMA.

I rooted earlier today and did this simple step to make sure I had the proper recovery.

Anonymous

Know what? No thanks. I think I’m just gonna leave it nice and sterile for now. Already cleaned up and disabled all the Verizon horseshit. I just want to spend some peaceful time with my baby before I change it.

Anonymous

I feel the same way as you. And since this is a google phone, we will be getting the newest first. Probably will root a couple of months from now just like I did with my OG.

Christopher LaPointe

Maybe if you’re planning on using custom ROMs right after your root in a few months. For anyone wanting to use anything root-required in the near future, you might as well get it out of the way up front so you don’t have to deal with your phone getting wiped after getting it just the way you like it.

Anonymous

Exactly. However, I don’t really see a need for those things right now. My OG Droid had MIUI and it’s sitting right next to the Nexus. I’ll root eventually. 🙂